Dead water - Barbara Hambly [101]
The note said:
Beloved,
I have tried to put you from my heart, but I have failed. I can no longer live without your kisses. Please, please, come to my stateroom at ten.
Your own,
Hannibal
January could tell the difference, but the handwriting was an excellent facsimile of Hannibal's own.
SEVENTEEN
So eager was Colonel Davis that someone should stand up and take a shot at Kevin Molloy that he was very little use as a second. “The man is a boor and a swine,” he announced decisively at the War Council that took place in Hannibal's stateroom minutes after Molloy's departure with Theodora in tow. “You're a gentleman, Sefton. You should be able to out-shoot him with ease.”
“Ah.” Hannibal took a long, shaky swig of opium-laced sherry. “A fact which entirely slipped my mind in the excitement of the moment . . .”
“Brace up, man! Surely you aren't thinking of backing out?”
“I have the feeling that I backed in. . . . As challenged, mine is the choice of weapons, I believe? And conditions?”
The door opened without the smallest vestige of a knock. It was Gleet.
“Molloy asks, what'll you have?”
Davis's sensitive nostrils flared like a spurred thoroughbred's at this display of arrogance from a man he despised. “Pistols at twenty paces!” he snapped before Hannibal could open his mouth to suggest shuttlecocks at a hundred yards. “And you can tell that bog-Irish blackguard that he should consider himself fortunate that gentlemen of blood would consider going out with him at all!” He turned back to Hannibal as Gleet left in an offended huff. “I applaud your chivalry of heart, sir, in trying to help the young lady, but I fear she is scarcely worth a gentleman's assistance.”
“I actually deduced that some time ago,” responded Hannibal, taking another drink only to have Davis remove the flask from his grip. “I didn't write that note.”
“The minx wrote it herself, then,” said Davis serenely. “She's doubtless lying herself to perdition at this moment. . . .”
“I'm the one who's going to end up being lied to perdition. . . .”
“Nonsense, man,” said Davis. “Buck up! No rabble can shoot straight. You'll do splendidly.”
“Who do you think did it?” asked Hannibal after Davis strode off, a-bristle with righteousness, to further confer with Gleet and locate pistols. The fiddler's hands were shaking as he uncapped his laudanum-bottle. Then he glanced at it and re-capped it, and thrust it at January. “Don't let me have that again.” He took it back, took one last quick drink, and pressed it into January's hand. “My money's on La Pécheresse. I'll bet she's got a pretty skill at forgery, and she'd welcome the chance to have me laid out on the floor next to her dear departed.”
“You aren't going to go through with it?”
“Do you think I'd get far ashore? You and I go over the side, they'll have posses after us for the murder before you can say Issaquena County. . . . And where does that leave Rose? Here on the boat alone? Or announcing her complicity by fleeing with us?”
“Where does that leave Rose—or myself—if you get killed and Davis hands me over to the sheriff at Mayersville . . . if I make it to Mayersville, with jackals like Gleet and Cain aboard? Completely aside from the loss of your friendship . . .”
“I'm sure there are plenty of other drunken wastrels in the world for you to choose from if you really miss my company,” retorted Hannibal bitterly.
“None that play the fiddle as well as you, though.” Rose stepped through the stateroom door and shut it behind her, and, putting her arms around Hannibal's neck from behind, kissed the bare scalp in one of the long fjords of his hairline. “And if you were killed, with whom would I make jokes about the Dialogues of Plato? Run for it. Both of you. I can at least stay long enough to see what La Pécheresse does next. . . .”
“I'm not leaving you alone on the same boat with Gleet,” said January at the same moment Hannibal said, “And I will not condemn the pair of you to the sort of poverty I've been living in since I washed up on these shores.”
“All right,” agreed